Buy an electric car, get a steep discount on the rooftop solar panels required to charge it

Ford has teamed up with SunPower to offer buyers of its forthcoming Ford Focus Electric a significant discount on SunPower's home solar power systems. This is more than just two companies teaming up to target a demographic likely to want to be interested in both their products: It also makes sense in terms of helping families get off of oil and coal at the same time.

The partners estimate that the SunPower system on offer will produce enough electricity to drive the Focus Electric 1,000 miles per month. That's almost as many miles as the average driver puts on his or her car per year. Sure, if you use the solar panels just to charge your car, you're still relying on America's stubbornly dirty mix of fossil fuels to power your home. But if that's your worry, home energy retrofits are a much cheaper solution.

It’s a pretty brilliant marketing strategy. Even better would be pushing it as apocalypse preparedness — in a civilizational collapse, you'd expect blackouts and interruptions to the oil supply at the same time. That could make the deal is as likely to appeal to fans of Glenn Beck as to hippies in Berkeley.